Researching, recording, uploading, premiering & comment editing my latest video about the IPCC and the climate Tipping Point, I’m reminded of the process of understanding or epiphany, that I’ve experienced many times but do not yet have an adequate term for:
You hear that there is something called climate change. You sense that there is such a thing as climate change. You hear that there is something called climate change Tipping Points. You sense that there is such a thing as climate change Tipping Points. You realise that we can either be at the Tipping Point, or it’s in our past, or our future. You sense that the Tipping Point is in our past. You state that the Tipping Point is in our past. You hear others pointing out that the Tipping Point is in our past. You take it for granted that the Tipping Point is in our past. Then you research & publish hard data analysis showing the Tipping Point is in our past.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? There’s a huge gap between just hearing about the Tipping Point already being in our past, and understanding it, and then researching and proving the darn thing. It’s like reading about some kid getting punched in the face in a book, and actually getting punched in the face! Everyone’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face, as boxer Mike Tyson pointed out.
Some of you, prolly too many of you, have a plan about waiting a number of years, and then putting a vote into some box to counteract the fact that the key climate Tipping Point is in our past. You’re gonna vote to counteract the fact that we can’t go back. How’s voting gonna change the fact that we can’t go back?
Some people when faced with unpleasant facts like these are likely to say that they disagree. And in this culture it’s more or less forbidden to ask these people whether they actually disagree, or just didn’t understand the thing that they believe they disagree with. In polite culture stupidity is already eradicated. No–one is stupid, everyone understands everything. Thank God for that! Only they are, and they don’t.
As already laid out in the video, the IPCC itself defines a climate Tipping Point as the threshold over to abrupt & irreversible climate change. With the ticking time bomb of getting an all dark blue Arctic Ocean, triggering the next ticking time bomb of gigaton releases of frozen CH4, we see the outlines of an Arctic chain reaction waiting to be triggered by the already rapid evaporation of sea ice. It goes without saying that this is dangerous, and it stands to reason that the only real Tipping Point taking us to an unavoidable triggering of this dangerous chain reaction, is the onset of rapid sea ice loss. The disappearance of ice in the Arctic is not comparable to the loss of some rare butterfly species in some remote swamp no–one visits. The disappearance of ice in the Arctic is the difference between a planet with human societies on it, and one without.
Now, most people have heard the IPCC and their local polluticians going on and on about “1.5°C” & “2°C” and whatever. They’re trying to downplay the significance of these milestones for global warming in their latest report, inserting instead some laughable quotes about 1.5°C being less severe than 2°C, and “every degree counts”. But you don’t have to be a genius in order to understand that there are certain lines involved that we shouldn’t cross. That if we cross them, everyone will have a bad afternoon, night, week, month, year, decade & century. That it’s game over if we cross that line.
That was my discovery in that video the other night, that we already crossed it.
So, realising this, at the most intense level of the intensity scale, that’s bad enough. And in order to verify or think independently, you gotta shut everyone else off for a while, and look at the scientific data itself. Then the next shock is realising what the IPCC is really doing. Their first letter means they are all the governments of the planet, so it’s really what all the governments are doing, to us. 40 years after we crossed the line, they are still talking like we can avoid crossing it. If we just buy the right cars, vote for the right fossil fuel party, and recycle, then 12 years down the line we may just manage to avoid crossing the line that we should never cross!
But the truth is we are already in the dangerous, non–linear, abrupt climate collapse.
They Be Lyin’.
Dark Comic Relief
PS: Oh, did I forget to embed my video? Here it is. Happy New Year!
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